


gameplay

by sonatine



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: CA:CW compliant, M/M, Multi, Steve and Bucky's great love story, basically Civil War happened and I had a lot of feelings, civil war spoilers, keeping up appearances - Freeform, protected and kept under wraps with for-show side relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 18:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6765490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/pseuds/sonatine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They knew how the game was played and they were good at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gameplay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirtybinary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/gifts), [okaynowkiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/gifts).



They knew how the game was played and they were good at it.

They’d had over twenty (no, seventy, _seventy_ , Steve had to keep reminding himself) years of practice and by now it was second nature. You take Dolores, or Maureen, or whoever out for a good night on the town, everybody has a grand old time, some innocent and happy kisses are exchanged, and then you drop her off back home with no funny business.

Her parents are happy, you are a perfect gentleman, and then you get to take your best friend home and fuck him into oblivion.

+

It’s a careful composition of deliberate yet seemingly casual gestures. The constant tallying inside your head, the definitive ranking of gesture for gesture to keep curious minds at bay and quell errant doubts.

If Bucky’s arm lingers around Steve’s shoulders for too long, he immediately follows it up with a well-placed comment about a girl’s well-placed bosom. If Steve has been giving Bucky his undivided attention (or maybe been caught staring at his beautiful mouth) for too long, he makes sure to amble off to flirt, very poorly but with the right amount of good-natured self-deprecation, with the lovely salesgirl behind the counter.

When a habit has been formed so long ago, it doesn’t really feel like work. It’s ingrained. It’s not putting on an act or covering your tracks, it’s easy survival.

+

And that’s not to say that Bucky wouldn’t go off for the odd overnight with a truly incredible and intelligent redhead or busty brunette with the swagger of a sailor, or that Steve wouldn't shyly step out with the kind girl from the corner store or the slim man from the post office, because— when you’re not technically, officially, allowed to love your best friend properly and out in the open, it kind of nullifies any outside dalliance. It’s not dalliance if you’re not really together. It’s keeping up appearances.

And everything done for appearance is automatically null and void because—it’s not real, is it? Bucky and Steve cooking dinner together with the radio in the background; or sitting at the table with Steve, moping, when he got fired from yet another job for missing too many days due to illness; or going with Bucky for endless walks around the block or mini errands when restlessness got the better of him (really, Bucky was the only person for whom three rotating jobs was a good thing).

It was the stolen extra half hour in the morning just laying in bed, hazy half-awake, with Bucky’s hand warm on Steve’s ribcage, his breath tickling the back of Steve’s neck; it was giggling themselves into a stupor at a joke so unfunny that it since became legendarily _hilarious_ to only the two of them; it was the commiserating look of complete resignation when first the stove, then the oven, the heat all broke in the span of two days.

When you’ve already got the real, a forever kind of solid real, then all that other stuff for appearances doesn’t even encroach. It fits nicely into a compartmentalized section— and of course there’s jealousy, but that’s just a part of the game isn’t it? Fuel for weekly fighting fodder, and then angrily making up, and then even sorrier words of excuse and the gentle licking of wounds.

+

This kind of compartmentalization might seem weird _now_ , Steve realized, but then it just _was_.

It might seem weird to feel pride when Bucky would snag the most talented girl at the dancehall. It might seem weird for Bucky to try so hard to set Steve up on dates, but really, what was weird about them both contributing to the protective armor that shielded them both?

Bucky and Sam looked on in pride as Steve scored with Sharon (who managed to _kick the Winter Soldier in the face_ , well chosen, Steve) and Steve smiled through heartbreak as T’Challa promised that Bucky would be safe in Wakanda. _Safe_ ranked just above _happy_ , so Steve could return home, not happy, but at least assured of Bucky’s safety. Of which Bucky could say the same for Steve.

+

And the terrible truth of it, the one that neither of them had the guts to say out loud yet, was the question of aging. Despite the cryo, Bucky had been alive for enough of the past seventy years to have aged _some_ , and Steve looked the same as he did when he’d been hauled out of the ice five years previously.

If Bucky had to sleep until the world forgot about the Winter Soldier, in the realm of a kind and handsome king, while Steve lived not-so-quietly, in wait, with either the lovely Sharon or the charismatic Sam (of the two S’s, Bucky was secretly voting for Sam, but that very much wasn’t bias on his part), then so be it.

When you’ve got what’s real, you don’t have to prove it to anyone.

 


End file.
